Fiona Apple Returns

Fiona Apple will release her long-delayed third album, Extraordinary Machine, on October 4th. "Now that my album is finally finished, I am very, very excited to have people hear what we did," Apple said in a statement. "I am so proud of it, and all of us who worked on it."

Apple began recording the follow-up to 1999's When the Pawn . . . with producer Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Kanye West) in a Los Angeles studio in 2003. After When the Pawn . . ., Apple took a two-year hiatus, during which she spent time with family and friends, read, worked on her visual art, rode around on her bike and listened to very little music. Finally, she told Rolling Stone in 2003, "I started to get the itch." Sessions with Brion and drummer Matt Chamberlain led to the bulk of the Extraordinary tracks, which the singer-songwriter described at the time as "all over the place." "But I'm too close to the songs," she added. "You'll just have to decide for yourself."

Though eleven songs from Extraordinary surfaced online, Apple stayed mum and continued work on the set with producers Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg) and Brian Kehew (Beck, Eels). The twelve-track CD will include a brand new song, "Parting Gift," as well as re-recorded versions of nine of the songs previously leaked online.

Epic launched a newly designed Web site at Fiona-apple.com Monday, where fans can stream two Extraordinary songs, "Parting Gift" and "O' Sailor." Both tracks can also be heard at Apple's MySpace site and will be made available for download on iTunes this Tuesday.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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